Man Holding Newspaper Make America Great Again Hat
Commentary
The MAGA Hat Is Non Campaign Swag. It'south An Keepsake Of Hate
Like others, I dismiss certain gestures as "symbolic:" significant just for show. However information technology's undeniable that some symbols scrape our nerve endings. The original American flag, representing for some our noblest aspirations and for others the era of slavery, provoked Colin Kaepernick into convincing Nike to continue its flag-emblazoned sneakers on the drawing board.
Others spar over the morality of flying the Confederacy's flag and maintaining statues exalting Amalgamated leaders. And why do skinheads (or history-insensitive punks) deface synagogues with swastikas, other than to trigger outrage, or anti-Semitic applause, over memories of the Holocaust?
A recent courtroom decision, cached in the avalanche of grim news about mass shootings, bolstered the case for mothballing that emblem of Trump-mania, the Make America Great Over again cap, forth with those symbols of evil.
U.S. District Estimate William Bertelsman dismissed a libel suit by parents of a Cosmic teenager against The Washington Post for its reporting of his January staredown with a Native American at the Lincoln Memorial. In the winter face-off that got more attention than its summertime denouement, Nick Sandmann and Nathan Phillips stood nose-to-nose, the latter chanting and drumming, the former's smirk beaming from beneath his MAGA cap.
Sandmann and swain students from Covington Cosmic Loftier in Kentucky were in Washington for an anti-abortion rally. Extended video and Phillips's testimony later suggested that members of the Black Hebrew Israelites, some of whom constitute a hate group, had taunted the students every bit "dogs" and "incest babies"; Phillips said he intervened to pacify the situation.
But Sandmann's and other students' MAGA caps bled anti-Trumpers' sympathy for them, justifiably: Unless you've been marooned on the International Space Station, you know that Trumpism is racism, breathy or latent (here's a summary of the voluminous evidence). That makes the cap no different than a Confederate flag. It's racial animosity woven in textile, unwearable without draping yourself in its political pregnant. Information technology would exist like donning a swastika and expecting to be taken for a Quaker.
The court ruling reinforced the cap's unsavoriness by reminding u.s.a. of its defenders' propensity to manufacture mythology nigh themselves. That's done as well by those who display other symbols of detest and by our president himself, who has spewed about 12,000 untruths or misleading statements during his tenure.
In Sandmann's case, he alleged that the Post libeled him with no fewer than 33 statements, spread over seven articles and three tweets. The "gist" of i article, he claimed, was that he "assaulted" Phillips, "physically intimidated" him, and had "engaged in racist conduct." But Bertelsman, a federal gauge in Kentucky, would have none of it. "This is not supported by the evidently language in the article, which states no such matter," his 36-folio ruling said.
Many of the allegedly defamatory comments either referred to the students as a grouping and not Sandmann specifically, the guess found, or else relayed Phillips's feeling intimidated by the students. Even if his fears were baseless, Bertelsman wrote, they were opinions, to which Phillips is constitutionally entitled and which the Mail service is constitutionally protected to print.
The variance from reality that the judge plant in Sandmann'south allegations reminds us of the bedtime stories concocted around other hate symbols as well. Defenders of the Confederate flag insist, in the words of one, that "it has goose egg to do with slavery." If such people had taken U.Southward. history, they would have learned that no less than the breakaway nation's vice president alleged its founding premise to be the inferiority and merited subjugation of African Americans.
Meanwhile, some contend for leaving Amalgamated statues up as monuments to history. In fact, they were erected not as history lessons but rather Jim Crow tributes honoring the Lost Crusade. A museum is the appropriate place to display and study such bigotry, not the public square.
As for the swastika, information technology inspires defenses that would exist risible but for the thing's grisly history. Before the Nazis hijacked it, it was a millennia-sometime good luck symbol in multiple nations, incorporated fifty-fifty into synagogue designs. For reasons I don't pretend to understand, some desire to hopscotch backward over the clan with six 1000000 slaughtered Jews to that less poisonous past.
Gas chambers, ovens and firing squads volition do that to a symbol. Some things simply are beyond redemption.
The commonsense response came from a writer who said that even pro-swastika types "can't seem to talk about the symbol without mentioning Hitler — perhaps proof that it is well-nigh impossible to divest a symbol of its meaning, even when its meanings are multiple." Gas chambers, ovens and firing squads volition practise that to a symbol. Some things only are beyond redemption.
That doesn't include Nick Sandmann's case, according to his parents, who vowed to appeal the judge's decision. "I believe fighting for justice for my son and family is of vital national importance," Sandmann's father said. "If what was washed to Nicholas is non legally actionable, then no 1 is safe."
I've no idea whether Sandmann Sr. is a Trump supporter. But hyperbolized dangers to national rubber inhere in the outlook of the president and his base. (The "invasion" on our southern border, for example.) Coupled with Nick'due south MAGA lid, the family'south grievances confronting the Mail service, deemed made-up by the judge, give this instance a stench.
Every bit a Cosmic, I promise Covington'south teachers refer their students to the church's instruction about the equality of all humans. Information technology may have been overlooked by parents who should tell their children to have the caps off their heads and donate them to a museum.
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Source: https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2019/08/29/covington-catholic-video-make-america-great-again-hat-rich-barlow
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